The Hollow Sprite
by Joshua Falken
Summary: After an accident at the Pentium Institute, Dot Matrix now possess an amazing power... and her family and friends discovers there is more to fear than they can see... (chapter 5 is UP!)
1. Chapter 1 Quantum Alteration

_The Hollow Sprite_  
_by Joshua Falken_

_Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"_

_Thanks to Sydney for the beta-reading and to Julia_Cat and BenRG for the revision. Thank you! :-)_

* * *

_**Prologue**_

Two hours ago, a super-virus, known as Daemon, infected the Guardian Collective, which controlled the security of the entire Net. The control of security protocols and, by extension, of the data transmission protocols would give total power to her. Except for a small detail.

System Mainframe, the one thought to have been destroyed in an attempted elimination by a web-creature, was connected to the Net again, and with that, the intact Guardian protocol had come back on-line, through three other guardians that had been believed lost. Daemon sent some infected guardians to eliminate them, thinking that it was just a detail without much importance, even when they failed. How could just a system shake the control that she had on the others? _That_ was Daemon's mistake.

System Mainframe originated a resistance movement, uniting with several others that were fighting against her and with every sprite and binome that had yet to be infected. Alone, they didn't have a ghost of a chance. Together, the free systems of the Net were a formidable force. The Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team (AVERT) was formed.

Now, the forces of Daemon, known as Echelon, and the AVERT were in a technical stalemate. Each one had half of the Net under its influence. From open war, it went to a tactics of mathematical war. Nobody attacked in a direct strike nor revealed the conditions of their own resources. Now, the attacks were on the communications and supplies lines among the systems, through sabotage and hacking. The development of cryptography codes and decoding techniques became a fundamental weapon. They were the only way to protect the communication lines against sabotage.

But both forces were forced to accept that the war was heading for an unavoidable draw. Although cryptography codes were increasingly developed, the protective codes of the Netships were approaching their limit of possible variations. Echelon and AVERT based those codes on the old MS-DOS/Neumann Equation, responsible for the hidden file force-field generation, the last possible protection for the intersystem transport.

Having in mind that that mathematical war would only reach the end with the development in a new way of generating a hidden file force-field, completely different from the MS-DOS/Neumann Equation, AVERT and Echelon pursued research in those areas. Whoever was the first to develop this new algorithm would win the war. Although it is not known as that Daemon's forces were pursuing their own research, AVERT thought they had discovered a breach.

In the Pentium Institute, in Mainframe A, Project Rainbow had at last reached its' final stage...

============

_**Chapter 1 - Quantum Alteration**_

In the soft light of the Main Room of the System Mainframe's Principal Office, now known as War Room, a sprite sighed after reading the last report. Command.Com and Commandant Dot Matrix didn't like anything that she had just scanned.

Dot jumped when she felt a hand on her left shoulder. It was Matrix. "Hey, what's going on, Sis?"

She sighed. "Daemon almost got to break the Transportation Line between the Systems of the Sub-Net 216." Dot stood up and walked in direction of the door.

He bit the lower lip to control his rage, while he followed his sister. That meant that Daemon had discovered a way to detect the AVERT Netships that made the connection between several systems... if she could do that, she had practically won the war.

"But did she stop the shipments of supplies?"

"No. Your idea of netship convoys worked very well." Dot said.

Matrix shrugged. "Well... all that time stuck in military strategy games was good for something."

Dot smiled sadly at Matrix, when she stopped and leaned against the wall of the corridor, her gloved hand on her forehead.

"Are you alright?!" Matrix asked, concerned.

"Yes... I'm fine. I just felt a bit dizzy, that's all."

"Dot, have you been sleeping lately? Or at least _resting_?" He asked suspiciously. He knew his sister very well.

"Just a little." She admitted.

"Sis, you have go sleep once in a while," Matrix warned, shaking his head. "I mean, I know that you are strong and that you have a lot of energy, but you doesn't have transfinite levels of energy, like Hex!"

Dot laughed.

"What's so funny?" He asked, surprised.

"I remembered how many times _I_ had to give that speech to make _you_ go to sleep!"

Matrix grumbled. She had made her point. "And Bob? When will he return?"

"Today. He finished the training of the volunteers in System Berkeley and Mouse finished the security firewall for the system."

System Berkeley was the newest ally of AVERT, and a task force was urgently needed to protect the system.

Dot and Matrix talked a little more, until the System Voice echoed: "Warning, Incoming Game! Warning, Incoming Game!"

"_Defrag!_ I gotta go! And Dot... Rest a little, ok?" He asked his sister, before going to the game with a worried expression in his face.

=======

Some time then, Dot was back to the War Room, monitoring the progress of the game.

"And then?" She asked Sperck.

"They are already in the last level. The User is still in the third."

The Command.COM caught herself biting her thumbnail, a sure sign of nervousness. Knowing that it was a somewhat easy Game, and that AndrAIa and Matrix were, perhaps, the best game specialists that Mainframe could want, due to their "field training", did not matter. She only got to breathe again when the Game ended. A perfectly comprehensible fact, considering what had happened during the beginning of the War against Megabyte...

A Vidwindow opened up:

"Hi, Dot! How are you?" Bob smiled. The Port of Mainframe was behind him.

"Bob! You've arrived already?" His arrival was not expected for another two milliseconds.

"Mouse discovered a shortcut." He gave a grin of "You-know-how-Mouse-is". "Where are Matrix and AndrAIa?"

"Inside of a Game, like you could ima..."

"Game Over! Game Over!"

"I think they aren't there anymore." Bob answered.

She smiled. "I'm going there." she declared.

As soon as the door of the War Room closed, Dot began to feel dizzy. Some nanos later, the dizzy spell had passed.

======

Half cycle later, they were gathered in the Core Control Room, the safest place of Mainframe. Bob had already told them about the volunteers in System Berkeley, and now Mouse was telling them about the System's defense shields.

"...They are not exactly the latest version, but they will take care of the message."

"Thank you, Mouse. And about the protection of the transportation line?"

The hacker made a wry face. The protection was based on cryptography and hidden file force-field generation. The first part didn't have a problem, but the second one... "It was the best possible." She answered dryly.

Everybody knew that that was true. There were a finite number of possible variations for the MS-DOS/Neumann Equation, and Mouse had already used most of them. Worse, each newer version was more and more similar to the previous one, making them easier to crack by the other side's cryptoanalysts.

Dot closed up the meeting. Everybody stood up and went home. It was already the end of the cycle.

Dot sighed, revealing her fatigue. Bob kissed her on the neck and hugged her for a while, knowing the responsibility that she had on her shoulders. "Are you ready?" he asked at last.

"Yes."

======

Dot couldn't avoid looking around of the interior of her apartment. It was cosy, but at the same time, roomy apartment. Too roomy, she thought. It was the apartment where her family had lived before the Twin City Accident, and where she and Enzo had also lived after that. Now she lived alone there.

"Dot?" Bob asked, concerned.

"Huh? Oh, sorry! I was only thinking." She had a sip of hot java. "Did you have any news about your family?", she asked carefully.

Bob closed the eyes and leaned in the sofa, a tense expression in his face. "None. I hope they are OK, but I just don't know..."

She put her gloved hand on his shoulder, to reassure him. Since the beginning of the war, Bob had lost contact with his parents. Naturally, this was something that he found extremely preoccupying, as they were in the very front line. His father, David Challenger, was simulation controller in the Northridge-NSSL system and his mother, Veronica Overdrive, was a Top-Level Guardian. Although he has not received any firm information, he feared that his mother was now under Daemon's control.

"Well, if they really are just a tenth than you told me, Daemon will have serious problems."

He couldn't avoid a smile at that thought. "You're right." He said, looking at her.

They were silent for some time.

Dot looked at for the window. Everything outside was calm, silent. No one who saw that could suppose the danger that they were facing...

"And how is Phong?" Bob asked. "In your message, you said that he had left the ICU."

"He is better now, but he still needs special care."

Although his mind was as sharp as always, Phong began to show the signs of ageing. His vision grew progressively, and he had suffered a core.sys attack. Now he was interned in Mainframe General Hospital, recovering from an energy line bypass surgery.

"I understand." Bob stood up. "I think I have to go now." He said, a little embarrassed.

Dot was silent for a nanosecond. "Well, it's still early." She finally replied.

It was not. And both knew about that. Their feelings demanded that they spend their downtime together, but prudence demanded otherwise. "Well, what about a good-night kiss?" Bob asked, to try ease the tension in the atmosphere a little.

She agreed. In the moment that their lips touched... well, let's say that prudence was shifted firmly to an inactive directory.

=======

_"Incoming Message! Incoming Message!"_

The sound of the vidwindow, transmitted by the plug in her right ear, woke up Dot. Sleepily, she noticed that she was still spooned around Bob's back. She looked at the clock on her bedside table. "5,034UT!" she thought, "Who would call at this millisecond of the morning?"

With some reluctance, she released her boyfriend from the hug, and got out of the bed. "This had better be _really_ important!" she thought, a little surprised at the intensity of her irritation.

The message just consisted of one line: "Project Rainbow successful. Experiment with high energy sprite today. Dr. Iridium is the volunteer."

Her chin fell and she read the message again.

Yes, the message continued to say the same thing.

In a fraction of a nanosecond, she shook Bob to wake him up. "Bob! Wake up!"

"What?" He asked, still sleepy.

"They got the new equation."

When he heard that, he become completely awake, with a surprised expression in his face. "But I thought..."

"That they were still in the theory stage." Dot completed. "Yes, I thought that too. But it seems that they must have had a quantum leap sometime in the last few minutes."

Quickly, both they got ready to go to the Principal Office. Dot stopped in the door of the bedroom, her face showing a little uncertainty.

"What is it, beautiful?" Bob asked, concerned. 

There was a pause before Dot replied. "Wouldn't it be better we went separately? Just in the case?"

A longer pause. "You are right. I'll find you there."

Bob gave her a fast kiss on the cheek and teleported himself away. As soon as the light of the process disappeared, Dot shook her head. "Can my life be any more pathetic?" she asked the empty air before leaving in the direction of the Principal Office.

======

Dot and Bob arrived at the reception room of the Pentium Institute, where a green-skinned, black-haired sprite awaited them. He wore a white lab coat and a red tie. He scratched his moustache, nervously.

"Hi Dot. Hello Bob."

"Hi Dr. Matrix."

"Hi Dad. Can we go to your office?"

Later, they were in the office of Dr. Welman Matrix, director of the Institute. It was a small, but functional office. The messy table showed that Dot had inherited from her _mother_ her organisational skills.

"Your message was serious? Your people really have developed a new hidden file force-field equation?"

"Well... yes."

"You don't seem very sure." Bob commented.

"Well, the fact is that Project Rainbow is considered top secret, therefore my knowledge is based purely on what Dr. Cisco and Dr. Iridium told me about it. They think they have a definitive solution, but..." He stopped, seeming a little unsure.

"But?..."

Dr. Matrix decided to continue. "Well, it is just a feeling. When a project suddenly accelerates to a conclusion in this way, there are usually problems. It is true that the tests with inert data and with a lieutenant binome who had presented himself as volunteer didn't indicate any collateral effects. However, even so, I believe that they are going too fast!"

======

"Even so, I believe that they are going too fast!" Dot recalled her father's words, as she listened to Dr. Cisco, a one binome, 60 hours old more or less. He described the basics of the invisibility process, but he was deliberately evasive about the details of the same.

"As you can see, the data does not show any collateral effects due to the hidden file field generation..."

Dot's attention wandered to the center of the laboratory, where they prepared for the test with a high energy sprite. Dr. Hewlett Iridium was doing a last check in the instruments. She was one of the best mathematicians in AVERT, but Dot thought the doctor was ambitious; determined to be the one who did the impossible and found the new equation. Dot had worried that her ambition would ultimately doom the project. However her fears did not seem to have been realised.

"Attention. Test Rainbow-beta in final stage of preparation." One of the assistants announced.

"Do you want to observe the test?" Cisco asked.

"Yes."

Moments later, everything was ready. Hewlett was standing up, in the center of a platform, between two enormous quantum variation field generators. At that same moment, in the Port of Mainframe, a Netship was being prepared in a covered dock for a field test of the new equation. The countdown had begun.

"Five. Four. Three. Two. _One. Activation!_"

The generators began to emit neon blue force lines around the volunteer and the generators themselves. Hewlett seemed to be going through the reboot procedure several times.

"Vital systems nominal." She informed

The force lines became weaker and Hewlett began to disappear. The assistants pointed for the platform, excited. The medical monitors didn't show any alteration in the performance of her vital systems.

"Great!" Cisco exclaimed. They had done it! There it was the final evidence!

In that moment of triumph, an alarm began to sound. "What?"

"Wait!" Hewlett yelled. "Something is wrong!" She lost the strength in her legs and fell.

"Turn off the field generator!"

At that moment, a silver stream of energy flashed out from the center of the platform, deleting Dr. Hewlett Iridium in a nano. The energy began to be thrown out in streams to every side, deleting some of the lab assistants. The others ran to protect themselves.

A stream flashed out in the direction of Cisco. Dot leaped, in a reflex action, knocking him from the path of the stream. The energy struck a column and burnt through it in a picosecond. A part of the roof, which the column had supported, collapsed upon Dot.

======

Matrix ran as fast as he could through the corridor in direction of the test site of the Project Rainbow. He found Bob and Dr. Matrix trying to force their way into the lab.

"What happened?!" He yelled, alarmed.

"Something went wrong with the test!"

"And Dot?!"

"She is still inside!"

Although the small window of the door, he saw the streams of energy emitted by the doomed experiment.

"Bob, why you didn't teleport yourself to get Dot of there?!" Matrix asked, yelling.

Bob answered, punching the door in frustrated fury. "The laboratory is protected by a Faraday's Cage! I can't teleport inside there!"

"Spam!... Alright. On the three, we knock down the door! One. Two. THREE!"

Even the combined force of Matrix and Bob was not enough to open the reinforced door. Matrix looked at the window of the door.

"Spam! They have a lot of junk blocking the door!" Then he noticed where his sister was. "BOB! DOT IS STUCK UNDER A GIRDER!" More and more of the streams of silver energy were flashing dangerously close to the unconscious sprite.

"HEY!" Dr. Matrix screamed behind of them, carrying a solid high pressure tube pipe with difficulty. "We'll use this as battering ram!"

Then they heard Dot scream. "Ok. Ready? One. Two. THREE!"

======

Dot had just dragged herself from under the girder when the one of the uncontrolled quantum variation streams struck her a glancing blow across the chest. She felt every single bit of data making up her being subtly shift and alter to a new configuration. The transformation was more painful than anything she had ever experienced. Her limbs locked solid and she screamed as loudly as she could.

She vaguely noticed Bob, Matrix and her father enter the room, their faces showing total despair. Immediately, Bob created a shield against the streams while Matrix removed pulled her to safety and her father desperately tried to examine her.

Within a few nanoseconds, the emergency teams arrived to tend to the other beings injured in the accident. As Matrix hovered over the unconscious Dot, her father tried to tell if she had been seriously corrupted by the accident. It didn't look good, her limbs were trembling as if her neural pathways had been disrupted. Bob was suffering a lot of strain, trying to hold back the hurricane of energy within the room. Then, as suddenly as it began, the silver streams of energy vanished.

And Bob didn't wait for one moment. He ran in direction of the emergency medical department, where he knew they would take Dot.

He arrived just as they were moving Dot from the stretcher to the examination table. Her limbs were still writhing and she had recovered enough consciousness to be whimpering in pain. "You will be OK, Dot." Dr. Matrix said as he examined her, praying that this would be true.

Then... it happened.

A light halo passed through her body, as if she had rebooted. Then her skin texture began to disappear, as it was being melted down. The flowing energy currents that made up the interior of a sprite were suddenly visible, as was the endoframe data, the skeletal equivalent in a sprite. Dot saw this and screamed in utter panic.

The skin texture of her face began to disappear, revealing blue eyes filled with terror and pain. In the chest, the core.sys could be seen, palpitating out of control. The energy lines of the body were visible, disappearing soon after. After a few picoseconds, the energy currents, core.sys and even the eyes faded from view, leaving nothing but the outer wireframe and the internal endoframe.

Dot screamed as if a million energised needles were being shoved into every sensory ending in her body.

Then, just the wireframe was visible, and then, nothing.

Dot's scream stopped with the suddenness of an electric light being switched off.

The only thing that they saw was the padding of the stretcher, deformed by the form of a sprite's unconscious body.

* * *

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 2 coming soon...


	2. Chapter 2 Partial Recovery and Diagnosi...

_The Hollow Sprite_  
_by Joshua Falken_

_Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"_

_Thanks to Sydney for the beta-reading and to Julia_Cat and BenRG for the revision. Thank you! :-)_

* * *

_**Chapter 2 - Partial Recovery and Diagnosis**_

Dr. Welman Matrix analysed - or better, he_ tried_ to analyse - his daughter's energy-blood in the microscope. This was a little difficult, because the energy-blood in question was invisible. A brief energy discharge brought it back to the normal, but just for a few nanos. Logic suggested that a continuous discharge would keep it visible. Instead, what happened was that the sample would be erased.

Frustrated, he turned off the machine and went to the room B1423 of Mainframe General Hospital.

As soon as the door of the elevator opened, he verified that the floor was empty. _Good,_ he thought, _as fewer people who know, better._

Room B1423 was completely isolated, a measure only used in case of suspected infection by some Class 20 virus. Now, that isolation was being used to protect Dot.

Sitting on the couch outside the room were Bob, Matrix and Enzo. They slept, tense expressions on their faces. They must have waited the entire cycle for news! Careful not to wake them up, Dr. Matrix looked into the interior of the room through the observation window. He thought about the story that they had invented to explain Dot's stay in the hospital. Officially, she had suffered very serious burns on her whole body. That was the story that Mainframe Data-Times and Mainframe Tattler had published. Maybe AndrAIa would be playing the PR expert right now. After all, if the Command.Com of the system suffers an accident, that's news, right?

With a sigh, he entered quietly in the room.

Sat down in a chair beside the bed, his wife, Kathleen, slept. On the bed there was a sheet moulded in the form of a sprite, as well as the deformation in the bed. Sensors that measured neural activity floated over the pillow. Energy serum was being fed down a cable to a point where he assumed Dot's arm was.

At that moment, Kathleen woke up. "Huh? Oh. Hello, Welman."

"Hi, Kathleen. You look terrible." He said, commenting on his wife's tired face.

"You aren't better." She answered in a distracted tone of voice.

"Yes, I know."

Holding her husband's hand, she whispered: "I still can't believe. I mean, I _know_ that Dot is sleeping in that bed, but, nevertheless..." She shook her head. "Any news?"

"No really. The biopsies and the medical readings indicate that she's physically well. She will wake up as soon as she recover from the trauma of the accident." He explained, gesturing in the direction of the neural activity meter.

Kathleen nodded.

He bit his lower lip as he examined the readings. 'Well.. it isn't something to _really_ worry about.' He told himself.

=======

After two cycles, Dot had still not recovered consciousness. Meanwhile, two people were always with her. The idea was that they would stop Dot from hurting herself if she panicked upon awakening. This would be a natural response to the situation.

While Bob kept his eyes shut, Enzo looked at the empty bed, bewildered. He already read sci-fi stories where the protagonist become invisible, and now... it was _his_ sister that was in that situation. Although a part of Enzo was thrilled with that, the other part was really concerned. A lot of stories finished with Invisible Sprite going mad. Of course that would never happen with Dot, but...

Dot began to groan. Bob immediately pressed a button, calling Dr. Matrix and the others. The two sprites were immediately alert.

======

Some thing made Dot's eyes burn. She opened them and a really strong light began to shine, blinding her. She tried to close her eyes, but the light continued to shine. "OH, MY USER! MY EYES!" She screamed, in pain. "SOMEONE TURNS THAT LIGHT OFF!!" She tried uselessly to block the light with her transparent hands.

In a spasmodic movement, Dot kicked the blanket that covered her away. Now, the only indications of her presence were the indentations on the mattress of the bed. and her screams of pain. "TURN OFF THAT SPAMMED LIGHT!" She yelled, pleading.

Enzo turned off the light of the room, while Bob hugged her, trying to calm her. He ignored the chill that he felt when feeling a resistance where his eyes said that there is nothing. "Dot, calm down! Shh, shh, love. It's okay. Everything is okay."

He felt Dot stop moving, as soon as the light was turned off. However, he could feel her fear in her voice and in her quick, panicked breaths.

"What did happen?! Why I can't see...?"

"You suffered an accident. The experiment in the Project Rainbow went wrong, and part of the energy reached you." He took a breath. "You are invisible."

"Invisible?" She asked, in a whisper. She was seeing with her own eyes the transformation, but even so a part of her mind demanded a confirmation.

"Yes."

Bob felt Dot suddenly become very still. He loosened the hug, slowly.

In a tight, controlled tone, Dot asked for a mirror. Enzo looked in a drawer and he found one. The Guardian-in-training saw the mirror float from his hand, when Dot took it.

She looked at the mirror, unbelieving. Bob was seated behind her, and she saw him perfectly in the mirror, but she didn't see her own reflection!

Bob and Enzo saw the mirror fog with her breathing.

All of a sudden, the mirror dropped on the bed and the deformation where was Dot was sitting vanished.

"Dot?..."

They heard the water running in the sink _on the other side_ of the room. They turned back in time of seeing the water form a puddle in thin air, rise and splash over an invisible surface, revealing Dot's face. With an incredulous and afraid expression. Enzo felt a chill when he saw his sister's face disappear, as the water slipped away.

"So, Dot, how is it to be like a ghost?" He asked, cautiously, with a weak smile. Bob closed his eyes in disbelief at the young sprite's disastrously weak attempt at humour.

"I'm not sure yet." Now her voice came from _behind_ them, close to the door of the room. "You _really cannot see me_?" She asked. Their expressions answered the question. "Wow." She whispered.

She couldn't believe it. She was invisible!

Dr. Matrix entered at that moment "Where is she?!" he asked when he didn't see the form of Dot in the bed.

"Right beside you, Dad," Dot answered.

Dr. Matrix's reaction was one of barely-hidden fright.

======

Later, Matrix, AndrAIa, Mouse, Ray and Kathleen were in a waiting room. The renegade guardian didn't stop walking to and fro. His girlfriend and his mother were seated on a bench. Mouse was cleaning her katana, in a reflex action, leaning against the wall. Ray was just standing close of her. Dr. Matrix, Bob and Enzo entered. There was a gap between Enzo and Bob.

"How is Dot?" Kathleen asked, trying to the maximum to hide her apprehension.

"Huh... Mrs. Matrix ... why you don't ask _her_?" Bob spoke, clumsily indicating the space between the youngest guardian and him.

"Huh... how are you, Dot?" she asked, even more clumsy.

"Fine, I think."

Everybody turned in direction of her voice, _on the other side of the room_. The light of the waiting room decreased abruptly in intensity. These events combined to leave all of them feeling rather nervous.

Dr. Matrix cleared his throat. "Her eyes are sensitive to light now as her irises can't control the amount of light that enters them."

That information left everybody calmer.

"Hey, Dot, are you really ok?" Mouse asked.

"I thinks so, yes," Dot replied in a strange tone. "Beyond the fact that I'm invisible, of course, and my eyes are more sensitive to light. According to Dad I'm pretty much norma..." Now her voice came from the middle of the room, beside AndrAIa.

"Dot, cut it out, please!" Her mother asked.

Ray laughed nervously. "It seems that we are playing hide-and-seek!"

"Sorry." She tried to explain. "As long as I am walking, I have the sensation that I am still here..."

AndrAIa swallowed hard, when she felt something bump into her.

"Excuse me, AndrAIa. I still haven't got used to not being able to see exactly where I am."

"It's ok, Dot. But can't you stop while we talk?"

"It is a little strange to speak with you moving places." Enzo explained, trying to help his father.

"Her gait is very stealthy, isn't it?" Mouse commented to Bob, who blinked surprised. "Maybe she should think of becoming a spy?"

They heard a sigh. Then a chair, which was leaned in the wall, turned to them and the cushion was forced down.

"Does that help?" Dot asked, her voice coming from the chair. As they didn't comment, she asked a question that was very important to her. "I think can ask now: how did this happen to me?"

They explained again, this time in more detail. An accident had happened during the test of Project Rainbow. No, they didn't know what had caused that reaction, but they were researching that in the Project records, or better, in what remained of the records. They were waiting for Dr. Cisco recover from his injures, to question him about the invisibility process. No, the tests didn't indicate any collateral effect besides the invisibility and a type of intensified vision. And no, they didn't know how to make her visible again.

Her father tried comfort her. "Dot, we are doing and we will do everything that is possible to reverse this it."

Dot was quiet for a while. "Huh... Daddy, do I have to stay here?" she inquired, weakly. He and Kathleen exchanged glances: both knew how Dot didn't like to be in hospitals, since she was a kid.

"I think is better for you to be monitored this downtime. Only so we can sure that you are well."

Resigned, she agreed.

======

In the dead of the downtime, Dot looked at the roof of her room. She wasn't sure what scared her more: the fact of being invisible or of being in a hospital. Not able to sleep, mostly because she had transparent eyelids, she stood up and she began to walk to and fro.

She placed her right hand to her face, feeling the invisible fingers. She looked at her own body, seeing through it. When she passed her hands over her body, she realised that still wore the clothes of the day of the accident.

She clicked on her icon, rebooting her clothing. Now, she felt that she was wearing a long coat, but that was also invisible.

Then, she lay on the bed. The moulded form was of a sprite in fetal position.

======

Next cycle, Matrix and Bob were back to the fourteenth floor of Mainframe General Hospital, to take Dot to her last medical exam. It would be in the floor below, already properly isolated.

The door opened, and Dot's voice spoke. "Let's go."

With the brother at one side and the boyfriend in the other, they went to the stairways. Mouse was right: Dot walked very quietly. In the first step of the descent, Matrix and Bob felt being grabbed and pulled down, at the same time that they heard Dot yell. They had not only fallen downstairs, because the two sprites held themselves in the handrails.

"I...I think that I slipped..." Dot recovered the breath. "I think I'm not accustomed to going down stairways without seeing where I step..." They heard a forced laugh. And very embarrassed, they noticed. For the rest of the descent, Matrix carried his sister in the arms, in spite of her protests.

Later, the invisible sprite was placed in a neural exam machine, similar to an Userworld's MRI. A chill went down the spine of Dr. Matrix, who operated the device: while Dot's head appeared on the monitor, to the naked eye, there was nobody in the machine. Results of the exam: normal neural readings, except for some high activity outbursts.

Back to the room, Kathleen and AndrAIa talked with Dot, while Matrix and Bob talked with her father, outside.

When AndrAIa left the room quickly, Matrix asked:

"Dad, is she really alright?"

"Well... yes. There were some changes in the neural signals, but everything inside of the normal patterns."

"What kind of changes?" Matrix pressured.

"The sleep waves present some frequent high activity outbursts. That's normal, considering what happened. Only if the outbursts were very powerful and constant would that be a reason for concern."

The game sprite entered again in the room, bringing a bag. "Come in!" Kathleen called them a little later.

When entering, they saw Kathleen sitting down in the chair, AndrAIa leaning in the wall and a female sprite in biker's black wear: boots, leather pants, a leather jacket with the collar shut, gloves and a helmet with a mirrored visor. The "biker" opened the visor of the helmet. There was not a face inside of it, they just saw emptiness.

"At least now you don't have to speak to empty space and I can leave this hospital room." Dot said.

* * *

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 3 coming soon...


	3. Chapter 3 Hostage Situation

_The Hollow Sprite_  
_by Joshua Falken_

_Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"_

_Thanks to Sydney for the beta-reading and to Julia_Cat and BenRG for the revision. Thank you! :-)_

* * *

_**Chapter 3 - Hostage Situation**_

The dark interior of the apartment was lit all of a sudden when a portal opened in the middle of the living room. Dot, Bob and Enzo emerged from it. Dot sighed, relieved at leaving that hospital.

"Home, sweet home." Bob said, smiling. Dot and Enzo just looked at him, and he shrugged.

"Enzo, you can leave your things in your old room." She said, removing her helmet.

He looked at her, a little worried. He could not avoid remembering the story of the Headless Horseman, when he didn't see her head over her shoulders and saw the helmet under her arm.

Bob heard Dot snickering. "It's a little strange," she exclaimed, "the change in roles: Enzo taking care of _me_!"

Before leaving the hospital, it had been decided that someone would watch her to guarantee that she wouldn't suffer any delayed side-effects. After all, just because the medical exams indicated that she was OK now, it didn't mean that she could not develop some symptom later. Enzo was the chosen one for the function. When somebody suggested that Hack and Slash could make the service, Matrix commented, sarcastically, "In that case wouldn't it be easier call the Data-Times, or better, the Tattler, and to announce that Dot is invisible? Because it is what will happen if those two watch her. They would not keep a secret, even if their lives depended on it!"

"Hey! Do you want something?" Enzo asked, from the kitchen.

"You don't waste time, do you?" Dot commented, opening the leather jacket. "Just a cup of java. And you, Bob?"

"No, thank you."

"Black?" Her brother asked.

"Yes, please."

When Dot had a sip, they saw the java go down her transparent throat, and disappear in the area of the core.sys.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothing at all."

Later, Dot was alone in her office in the apartment, checking if any urgent work for Mainframe's maintenance or an AVERT requisition had been put back. It was true that she was only absent for five cycles, and that her friends had checked twice each routine that ran in the city, but Dot was too much an experienced administrator to forget that it was exactly in situations like this that the Murphy's Law attacked...

She checked the messages for her. She blinked: "Thirty five messages?!"

She pressed the play button of the organiser.

"Hello, Miss Matrix." Said the masculine voice, in a calm and professional tone. "This is Howard Copernic, from Mainframe Data-Times. I would like to know if you are available to speak about the time that you stayed interned..."

Fast Forward.

"Miss Matrix, here is the CGI Special Agent Dana Nully. I would like you come to the CGI Office as soon as possible, to testify in the inquiry that is happening about the accident in the Pentium Institute..."

Stop.

"CGI?!" She murmured, surprised. But why in the Net would the CGI investigate... Then she remembered. By her _own_ decision, any accident in that there that had the suspicion of sabotage would have an independent investigation, by the CGI. And the accident in the Project Rainbow was a good candidate in the category, due to its connection with the AVERT defense efforts.

She sighed and shook her head.

Play.

"Miss Matrix, this is Roger Pagemaker, from the Tattler." The reporter had an ironic tone in his voice. "I would like your comments on a article that we are doing on an explosion that happened at the Pentium Institute due to sabotage..."

Stop. Fast Forward.

Another message of Data-Times.

Plus two messages of Tattler.

Plus twenty-nine messages to hear.

======

Dot was sleeping in the bed, exhausted. During seven cycles her routine had been divided between meetings in the Principal Office about the War against Echelon and about the maintenance of Mainframe, escapes from Mainframe Data-Times and Mainframe Tattler's attempts at interviews, and medical exams to determine if she was well. She felt sometimes that they had removed enough energy-blood to make her anaemic for the rest of her life (not that anybody would notice in the condition in that she was now). In the third cycle, a test done made her fell so ill that she vomited for half a millisecond. Also, there is the fact that she didn't get to sleep: the light passed through the eyelids. She only got to rest now because her body didn't bear it anymore... She felt and was in the limit.

_"Warning, Incoming Call! Warning, Incoming Call!"_

The warning came from the living room. She looked at for the clock: 2,075UT.

Who would, in healthy conscience, call in that millisecond?!?!

Murmuring some curses, Dot got up and went answer the call. In the way, she bumped her invisible hand on a vase, that shattered in the fall, and she tripped twice. The combination of invisibility and tiredness completely destroyed her movement co-ordination.

She activated the function "Audio Only".

"Who are you?" She asked, tired and upset.

"Hello Miss Matrix, here is Roger Pagemaker, from Tattler, do you remember me?"

Dot remained silent for an instant, incredulous. Then she spoke with an extremely controlled voice:

"Mr. Pagemaker, do you had idea _what time is it?!_"

"Excuse me, but it was very difficult to contact you. Your friends have built a wall around you. Why?" He asked ironically, as if he knew there was some story there.

"Mr. Pagemaker, I don't know about you, but I am too tired right now to even think coherently. Besides having gone through a very bad experience, therefore excuse me if I don't have time to answer your impertinent questions."

"Well, you can't say that we didn't give you a chance to speak!" He exclaimed, before she turned it off. She was seething with anger.

Enzo, who had just woken up due to discussion, saw his sister's nightgown floating in the middle of the living room. He approached her carefully, and he touched in the area where her right shoulder should be, at an arm's distance.

"Are you OK?"

"NO! I AM NOT OK! I AM TIRED OF EVERYBODY ASKING IF I AM FINE! I AM TIRED OF BREAKING THINGS BECAUSE I DON"T GET SEE MYSELF IN THE MIRROR! I AM TIRED OF HIDING AS... _AS AN ABERATION!_"

Enzo gave a step back, for pure reflex. He was terrified by his sister's outburst, her really furious voice coming from a distance of some centimetres from his face. He tripped on the rug, falling over his bitmap. He never saw his sister that furious: that was fury at the highest level. His eyes showed the terror that he felt in a very clear way.

For a moment, they just looked at each other. Jaggies passed through Enzo's spine like thunderbolts.

Then, he heard his sister say: "Enzo... I... I'm sorry. I didn't want..." The tone of her voice was at the same time shocked with her own reaction, and deeply embarrassed by what she had just done.

Enzo swallowed dryly, before answering:

"Its' OK, Dot. I know that you're a little upset lately. You needed to blow off some steam."

He stood up and took her back to her room. "Enzo, excuse me. I'm really sorry."

He told her that everything will be well and that after resting a little, she would feel much better. After she closed the door, Enzo placed his hand over his chest. His core.sys pulsed as an out of control pile driver. Dot would not be the only one to have difficulty to sleep that downtime.

======

In the following cycle, Dot was in her apartment, accompanied by her mother and AndrAIa. Half a millisecond before, they had come back from a session of medical exams. Dot's outburst in the earlier downtime could be credited to the psychological stress, but it could be a collateral effect from the invisibility. They had to check to be certain.

"Mom, explain to me again how you learned about theatrical make-up." The invisible sprite was lying on the sofa, that was covered with a towel.

"Well, in college, my class decided to do a sci-fi play." Kathleen explained, while she prepared a jar of plastic material, of the same colour of Dot's skin when she was visible. "They decided to do something about monsters, I don't remember the story now, but the make-up would be a _very_ complicated work. While they discussed who would be with the problem, I was called by the director to solve a problem with my school record: a part of it seemed to have been lost. After solving that, I went back to the theatre and I was informed that I would have the great honour of being the make-up artist for the play."

Dot and AndrAIa laughed.

"Well, I didn't have another choice. I had to do the make-up anyway. It's ready!" She informed, bringing the glass with the plastic mass to them.

"And was the make-up good?" The game sprite asked, at the same time that gave Dot a breather.

"Yes. The play participated in a competition in various modalities: we only won the make-up award. Close your eyes." Kathleen emptied the plastic mass on where should be her daughter's head. Dot's face appeared.

======

Dot, Enzo, Mouse and Kathleen were walking in direction of Dot's office, in the Principal Office. They saw Dot's secretary, a zero binome called Mrs. Eprom. Enzo, Mouse and Dot's mother silently hold their breaths. They arrived to the door, when the secretary noticed them.

"Hello Miss Matrix. It's nice see you back."

Dot didn't turn back, holding the eye shade of her cap down. The collar of her jacket was raised. "Thanks, Mrs. Eprom. Something urgent?"

"No."

"Good. I will talk with you later."

They enter in the room, and closed the door, immediately. Mouse said:

"It worked."

"More or less. And I don't believe that you let me sleep for _two entire cycles!_" Dot exclaimed.

"Dot, if you slept for so much time it was because you needed it," her mother said.

"And are you feeling better, isn't?" Enzo rebutted, smiling.

She conceded that point. Now, she felt really rested.

"And Dot... Nice face." Mouse chuckled.

The Command.Com removed the dark glasses that covered her eyes. She was using a plastic mask, moulded in the form of her face. A wig substituted the hair. But the eyes had to be hidden with that glasses, until them discover a better solution. "The hollow sprite." Mouse thought, a little anxious, when she saw Dot's empty eyesockets.

"Thank you, Mouse," Dot thanked her, ironically. The mask didn't seem very natural, with some wrinkles, but it fit with the story of the burns, and now, in an emergency, she had a face to show. And she could sleep, because the mask impeded the passage of the light.

_"Warning, Incoming Game! Warning, Incoming Game."_

"Oh, perfect." Mouse summarised the opinion of all present. As soon as the game cube landed, they saw the environment: they were in a police station.

Enzo was the first to reboot:

"ReBoot!"

His character was a policeman. The others followed him. Mouse was a policewoman, Dot was a detective and Audio was a public prosecutor.

"What does Voyager say?" The hacker asked.

Enzo verified Voyager, his key-tool.

"This is a simulation game called "SimPolice", to see who can administer a police station better. We have to compete with the User's station, solving the cases better than him. Bob and Matrix are also inside the game."

"Well, let's go!" The Command.com ordered.

Kathleen could not avoid a smile. Her daughter was returning to the normal.

======

Now they were arriving at the end of the game. Only a case left, but it was a problem of the size of the Supercomputer.

It was a hostage situation.

A gang of thieves had invaded a bank and taken the customers and employees hostages. Matrix was inside of the bank, as one of the security guards. He could have solved the situation easily, but there was a detail that he has just informed his sister:..

"They are all covered with explosives! They covered their bodies with P2B4!" Matrix informed her, by means of a cellular phone.

Bob, as a police sniper, closed his eyes. "The heat of a bullet would detonate that explosive. A shot could send the whole building sky high." He answered Dot's silent question.

On that moment, another voice appeared on the telephone, nervous: "Now, you will take us seriously." And the voice began to do the list of demands: a car to escape, without pursuit or any charges... the usual.

"But Bob, the heat of a _bullet_?"

"I know, the bullet is fast, but the explosive is temperature unstable to this point, really."

"Can't you get in there another way?" Dot whispered.

"How?"

"You know... teleporting."

"No, the game has an internal logic that doesn't allow teletransport!" He slammed his hand on the car, frustrated.

"Go in there?!" Detective Jack Shepherd, the user's character, asked, sarcastically. "Only if you were invisible."

Dot looked at the User for a moment, completely without expression. Then, she pulled Bob to a side.

"Could that explosive detonate from a physical impact, like a punch?"

"No, just for action of the heat." He answered, surprised. He had not understood what she meant.

"Bob, take the control of the operation."

"But, Dot..."

"I had an idea." She ran in direction of the bookstore on the other side of the street, entering in the bathroom. As soon as she entered in one of the stalls, she pulled up her left hand leather glove, revealing the emptiness inside.

"It's worth a try." she murmured, pulling up the facial mask.

======

Matrix was lying on the floor, face down, as well as the other hostages. Two thieves walked to and fro. The third one, aimed a gun to the head of an employee. He was seething with anger. If it wasn't that defragged explosive...

Suddenly, the front door opened up, as if it had been kicked. Everybody turned to the door, but they didn't see anybody that could have opened the door in that way.

The thieves looked at each other, confused.

The closest thief of the door thought to have heard a breath at his right side, before being knocked down by a strong punch in his face, coming from nowhere. He was knocked out completely.

"Hey, Matt. What happe..."

The second thief tripped in something unseen. During the fall, his body was projected back, as if his face had been kicked.

Matrix had understood what was happening, as soon as the first thief had fallen. He leaped over the third one before he had chance of gathering him wits after those absurd events or had a chance to hurt the hostage. Disarming him, the renegade soon shackled him.

During that, the second thief was knocked cold, but nobody knew how, except Matrix.

After tying the three criminals, he alerted the policemen who were awaiting outside the bank. In the moment they entered in the building, Matrix heard:

_"Game Over! Game Over!"_

The game cube departed, leaving the Mainframers, outside of the Principal Office. Bob ran in direction of Matrix, as well as Kathleen, Enzo and AndrAIa.

"What happened? Where is Dot?" They asked, in a whisper, to the renegade.

A one binome come to them.

"Where is the Command.Com? I didn't see her after the game."

"She went to the Principal Office." Matrix said, to cover Dot's 'disappearance'.

"That fast?!"

"Don't you know how she is?" The renegade replied.

As soon as the binome gone away, Bob felt an invisible hand grabbing his right arm.

"I'm here." Her voice came beside them. Before they could recover from the fright and the surprise, Dot asked. "Can we go back to the Principal Office?"

======

Enzo walked at his sister's side, while they went back to her apartment. Now, Dot wore a new mask, since the previous one had been lost when the game de-rezzed. She wore dark glasses, a black jump suit and a black coat. He began to laugh.

"What?" She asked, surprised.

"Sorry, Dot, but you look like a cross between a businesswoman and a spy."

"Ha-ha," she snorted.

They entered and she removed the dark glasses. An involuntary shiver went through Enzo's spine when he saw her hollow eyes.

"Can't you use contact lenses?"

"Not the normal ones. Dad is making special lenses, to hide... my invisibility."

"But, Dot... is it that bad?"

"Well, I can't appear invisible on the street, can I?" She answered.

"That wasn't what I meant. I want to know how it is to be invisible."

"No one sees you." She smiled. A sad smile, Enzo noticed.

"Ha-ha. Very funny."

She sat down in the sofa and observed the expression in her brother's face. "Are you really curious, huh?"

"Yes. I'm curious about it, and, mainly, curious about how _you_ are dealing with it." He sat down at her side.

"Who said that I'm not dealing well with this?"

"Sis, I know you very well."

Dot stayed silent for an instant, then she spoke. "It is strange." She removed the glove on her left hand. Soon after, Enzo felt an invisible hand touch his cheek. "I can feel your face with my hand, but I can't see my own hand. When I want to touch an object, I'm not sure from where my hand is, then I knock down things, sometimes. I can't explain it right. I... I feel completely separated, different from the others. There are moments in that I feel that I'm not here."

Her voice seemed sad. Enzo decided cheer her up a little and convince her that the situation was not so bad.

"Come on, Dot. Your invisibility helped to win the game, right?"

"Yes, but I wasn't sure that would strike a punch. It was like fighting while blind."

"And now you to go to any place without anybody knowing: as much as to the movies, without needing to pay the entrance, as to go spy on Daemon in her HQ!"

She laughed. "Do you want me to become a super-spy?" She asked, smiling as she got to her feet.

"You already have an advantage." He smiled back. "Come on, did you never want be invisible to enter in the boy's room when you're in the school?" She snickered at hearing the classic invisible person joke. "You could also see Bob in his apartment without him knowing!" he added, joking.

"Enzo!" She exclaimed, entering the bathroom.

"Dot, everybody knows that you two are dating. And do you want to know? Everybody wonders why you haven't got married!" While he spoke, he went in direction of the door of the bathroom, which was open. He preferred to speak with her face to face. Or the closest thing possible.

When he arrived the door, his sister had disappeared. Before he could react, he felt himself being tackled. Falling to the ground, he began to feel tickles. He tried to stop it, trying to also tickle in her, but it was almost impossible.

"Dot, stop!" He asked to her, laughing.

"Then you give up?" Her voice seemed that she would burst into laughter to any nanosecond.

"Yes." he answered. Then, Dot stopped and clicked on her icon, wearing mask and visible clothes again. Covering the eyes with the dark glasses, she smiled at her brother, who was still recovering his breath.

"Next time, let me worry about my relationship with Bob, ok?"

"Okay. But that isn't fair, you know?!" But he was smiling too.

"Hey, _you_ are the one putting these ideas in my head! What do you think of talking your own medicine?"

"Guilty as charged. Feeling better?"

She laughed. "Yeah, I am feeling better. Thank you." As she hold out her hand to help him to stand up.

"You are welcome."

======

Dot rolled in the bed, thinking of the talk that she had with Enzo. A lot of what he had said was to cheer her up, she knew that. But... it also made sense.

She got up, the nightgown and the mask floating in the air.

She went to the room, thinking. 21,015ut. An idea began to take shape in her mind.

She entered in Enzo's room, and shook her head when she saw him. During the sleep, he had thrown the blanket to the ground, and a leg was hanging. She placed the leg on the bed and she covered him again.

Her invisible fingers arranged his hair. Her lips kissed him on the forehead. "Good downtime." Her voice whispered in his ear.

She left and closed the door quietly.

Dot got dressed with the mask and the visible clothes and went to the door of the apartment. She stopped before touching in the handle. Then she decided.

She rebooted and left to the downtime... _invisible_.

* * *

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 4 coming soon...


	4. Chapter 4 A Young Woman's Night Out

_The Hollow Sprite_  
_by Joshua Falken_

_Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"_

_Thanks to Sydney for the beta-reading and to Julia_Cat and BenRG for the revision. Thank you! :-)_

* * *

_**Chapter 4 - A Young Woman's Night Out**_

The hollow sprite faced the corridor, uncertain for a moment. She could turn back yet. She shook her head. No. She would take this path until the end.

She walked in direction of the elevators and pressed the call button. While she waited, she saw that the door of the stairways was open.

"What am I thinking? I can't go down stairs while invisible." Dot thought, after she went to the stairs area. "I can't see my feet." Looking at the descending way, she saw the steps perfectly, even in the darkness. She considered that. "But... if I'm careful and walk slowly..."

She breathed deeply and she gave the first step. She didn't fall downstairs like an analog. Taking the second step, she felt as if she was learning how to walk again. Slowly, she descended to the floor below.

"Alphanumeric!" She exclaimed, a little louder, for that small victory. She looked at for the sides, to certify that no one had heard her. As nobody appeared, she began to go down the second flight of stairways. Ten more to go.

======

The guard in the reception area of the building where Dot lived arched his eyebrows, when the stairs door opened up, as if by itself. When he approached to examine it, the door of the main hall, which was locked, suddenly opened up and later it closed also by itself, as if a ghost was haunting the building. A bit of fear filled the guard's confused eyes.

======

Dot walked in direction of the Principal Office, when a truck passed close of her, splashing through a puddle. The water reached her legs, turning them visible. The shines of the water drops delineated her legs as small blinking lamps.

"What?" A groggily voice was heard.

Dot turned and saw a homeless binome, that had been sleeping hidden in an alley, look at her. Or better, at her legs, since it was the only visible part.

The binome saw a pair of brilliant legs to run off and disappear, as the shining droplets ran away to the ground. Finally, the shining vision disappeared completely. He looked confused for a moment, before saying: "Never am I drinking ROM and High Energy Shake together again." With that, he went back to sleep.

======

Mouse and Ray had just left the Principal Office, after finished a complete checking in the defense shields. They were close of an automatic machine, when she decided take a cup of java.

The hacker stopped suddenly, looking to either side. "What is wrong, love?" Ray asked.

She frowned, her hands touching the pockets of her coat. "Did you already have the feeling of being watched? As _ridiculous_ as it could be?"

"No."

They looked around in turn. The few people that were in the street didn't pay attention to them. Distracted, Mouse switched the java machine on. None of the two noticed that the thermostat moved, and that the thermometer had gone up a little.

She let out a scream, when she had the first sip.

"What did happen?!"

"This java is too hot!"

"Did you burn yourself?"

"No. It wasn't so hot, but..."

Ray looked at for the thermometer: normal temperature. For a test, he also poured some java. It was normal. They looked at each other, confused.

======

Dot laughed a little, in disbelief. She had moved away from Mouse and Ray and she was at some blocks away from them.

They didn't notice that she was beside them! Neither when she messed with the thermostat. Not very hot, just enough to catch them of surprise. Sure, it was very childish, but she couldn't resist! But it was good to see Mouse confused, for a change... The hacker had looked directly at Dot, but she hadn't seen her!

The sprite walked on the main street of Baudway sector. It took her a while to get used to the fact that no one could see her, so she always had to be the one to step to the side when someone was walking towards her.

All of sudden, she feel dizzy. She leant against a light pole. When that feeling passed, she noticed that she was in front of the Algorithm Theatre, the few sprites and binomes standing in line to buy entrance. She was not surprised: since the Users began to upload the movies of their world to the Net, some of them made an incredible success, as the one that was now showing: "The Sixth Sense". She remembered the very favourable comments that her friends made about the movie, especially the ending. Matrix and AndrAIa got to see the movie twice just to certify that they had really understood the story. Mouse and Ray had seen the movie too, although Mouse claimed that she hadn't liked it, much to the others' disbelief.

She sighed. She and Bob had thought of seeing that movie, but they had to postpone it due to an AVERT emergency... Later, he and Enzo had watched the movie, and they loved it. But as well as Matrix and AndrAIa, they refused to tell her the end!

She was in front of the entrance door, when she saw a couple pass through the turnstile. Her invisible eyes narrowed. "Why not?" She thought.

Dot jumped over the turnstile. The ticket collector didn't notice.

She went until the auditorium, being careful to not bump into anyone, what was easy, since there were few people for the last showing. During the trailers that preceded the feature, she stretched out her hand to try to do a shadow in the screen. Obviously, she didn't have a shadow. She should already have foreseen that, but even so... she could not wrap her mind around the fact that no one could see her.

She shrugged, when the intro music of "The Sixth Sense" began, and she leaned on the chair, crossing her legs, to watch it.

======

The spectators began to leave, after the end of the movie. Without their knowledge, they had someone accompanying them, with a smile. Partly, because Dot had liked the film too. But also, because she felt... well... a different sensation... that she couldn't exactly explain yet.

She was going to the terminal station of one of the four train lines that tied the five hard drives, that now composed System Mainframe. When Mainframe had been restored, the User, besides restoring Mainframe B and everybody that lived there (including her parents), had also installed more three hard drives, enlarging the system capacity a lot.

She was to cross the street, when a truck came in high-speed. Dot jumped back to the sidewalk moments before the near-impact. While the truck left, Dot slapped her forehead. She was invisible! The driver cannot see her! If she had not seen that truck, she would now be... Dot shuddered, trying not to think in the possibility.

Crossing the street with much more attention (with the help of her enhanced vision), she entered in the station. She looked at the clock, still lacked some nanos for the arrival of the train of Verhoeven-Wick Route, that tied Mainframe A and C. While she waited, she noticed two sprites, standing, awaiting the train too. Both they seemed known to her. One of them was a young man, with grey skin and blue hair, with a somewhat cynical expression in his face. The other one was a young woman, of silver skin and red long hair, who reminded Dot of Mouse, with an bored expression that said that she would like to be in anywhere else. Curious, Dot approached of them.

======

Lynn Cog's patience had reached its' limit. She had missed three printing deadlines and she had to reformat the Mainframe Data-Times' edition that was being printed now... and now she had to deal with Roger Pagemaker, one of the most cynical and sensationalist reporters she knew. "Roger," she complained, "I don't have the patience to stand your cheap moves, ok?"

With a malicious smile, Roger shut his mouth and turned for the other side. Lynn's back was turned when she felt someone _very_ close to her. Suddenly, Lynn felt a hand touch her Ascii. Blushing in shame, she closed her fists, looking daggers at the responsible for that.

As soon as the train stopped in the station, Lynn Cog narrowed her eyes and punched Roger Pagemaker in the right eye, a punch so strong that he fell to the ground. Indignant, he asked why she did that.

"As if you didn't know why!" was her answer, before she boarded in the train.

======

An old binome was seated in one of the train cars, knitting, when suddenly she heard a woman's voice burst into laughter. It seemed that the woman had heard a really funny joke. Annoyed by the laughter, the old lady lifted her eyes.

She almost had a core.sys attack. The laughter continued, but there was no one there! Shaking, the old lady disembarked soon that she could when the train stopped in the next station. The voice silenced for one moment, then she laughed again.

======

Dot was seated, close to the door. She dried her eyes, has just laughed a lot. First, the punch that Lynn Cog had given in that idiotic reporter, that importuned Dot since from the accident. Dot knows that she shouldn't have provoked the woman, but he deserved that.

Then the reaction of that old binome lady, scared with Dot's laughter. Sure, she should not laugh of the fright that she gave to that poor old lady. But she couldn't avoid the fact that it was funny.

Dot was to disembark in the last station before the train to cross the bridge that tied the two hard drives, when AndrAIa entered in the train. Surprised, due to the lateness time, and curious, Dot changed her plans. She wanted to know where the game sprite was going.

======

Later, AndrAIa was in front of the Susan Calvin Sporting Center. Before entering, she looked at the sides. She didn't get to shrug off that sensation of being observed. "Delete that!", she thought. She asked the security guard if Matrix was still in the Center.

The guard told her that he was in the firing range.

With a sigh, AndrAIa went in that direction. She didn't notice that the guard had a problem closing the door, as if something invisible had been caught in it.

AndrAIa opened the door of the firing and heard the shots that her boyfriend was aiming perfectly at the targets.

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" She asked as soon as he removed his hearing protectors.

"Huh? Hi, Andi."

The door opened up slowly again. Shaking her head, AndrAIa approached him.

"I don't understand why you practice shooting until the early seconds of the downtime. You have the best aim in System Mainframe." He frowned a little. Besides his mother and his sister, only AndrAIa could call him by his real name without getting him angry.

The renegade shrugged. "If Daemon attacks Mainframe, I want to be ready and able to blow off her head."

The game sprite looked at him a little apprehensively. He noticed and understood the reason. "I'm not looking for it. But I guess that if the situation arrives to that point, it's better to be prepared to stop her," he said, in practical and calm tone.

AndrAIa relaxed. For a moment, she was afraid that that violent rage that he had suffered during the game-hopping was returning. That rage came from many things: his rage at Megabyte, the frustration for having lost that mis-compiled game, the fear of having failed his friends, the frustration of not being able to go back to Mainframe... All this combined inside of him, turning him a bitter and extremely temperamental sprite. Even cruel, sometimes. AndrAIa could not avoid thinking that, during that time, it was as if he was becoming a virus, the thing that he most hated. And she thought Matrix had also noticed that, unconsciously.

The tables were turned during the end of the War against Megabyte, when they faced each other. Matrix was about to delete the virus, but he didn't. Matrix never said the why, but she thought that he had done that to prove to himself that he was not the same Megabyte, to exorcise that demon of his soul... and he achieved that goal.

Not that his personality has changed all of sudden. Everything that he had gone through had left scars on him. He continued a sprite with a very short temper, someone easy to irritate. But not in the way that scared her. Annoy her, yes, sometimes.

Matrix noticed the way how AndrAIa looked at him. "What?"

"I was only thinking in how much you changed. Just that."

He gave an ironic laugh. "And what did you want? After telling me that you could imagine me as that guy with the axe in "The Shining"?"

She smiled, embarrassed. That was another factor that allowed Matrix to control his temper. He could accept that AndrAIa could be angry with him. After all sometimes she had the right to be angry, but he refused to accept that she could be _afraid_ of him. When she said after that movie, that she could easily imagine him in that way, going random and trying hurt her... Well, you can imagine the shock that he had.

The two young lovers were silent for a while before AndrAIa spoke. "Shall we go?"

"Go ahead, I have to put a few things in order before I leave."

AndrAIa left the room. Matrix looked at the open door for a moment, before taking a small box from his pocket. He opened it.

He became alert in an instant. He thought that he heard someone gasping. Blaming his imagination, he murmured somewhat annoyed with himself: "You didn't have courage, did you? _Again._" He closed the box with the engagement ring, and left the room.

======

Dot shook her head and wearing an incredulous smile as she walked through the Sporting Center. Matrix thinking of proposing marriage to AndrAIa?! She knew how much they had been through together, so was to be expected that they are thinking about something like that, but she was surprised that was him who was thinking seriously in that subject...

When Dot stopped to think about that, she saw that she was in front of the Olympic pool. The water was completely calm and clear. She placed her left hand into the water, forming a kind of hollow bubble. The shape of her hand was perfectly visible. She chuckled.

She withdrew her hand and she looked thoughtfully at the pool.

There was the sound of a double click followed by a light splash. A bubble in the form of a sprite was visible in the middle of the pool.

She swam the whole length of the pool twice, her arms visible due the sheet of water and the body visible because of the void that it formed in the water. When she left the pool, the water covered her completely, creating a transparent bubble of her. Ghostly, in a certain way. She smiled.

Dot picked up a towel and she began to dry herself, while wet footprints marked the route that she took.

======

Later, the hollow sprite went back to her apartment, going by the way of Kits Sector of Mainframe A. She noticed that she was just a block away from the building where Bob lived. She stopped, an idea forming in her head, remembering the talk that she had in her apartment earlier.

"_Don't even think on that!_" She murmured to herself. She turned her eyes to her boyfriend's apartment, noticing that the lights were turned off. "But... it would not do any harm..." She said, in a whisper, giving up to the idea.

======

Bob woke up when the door bell rang. Looking at the clock, he became surprised, due to the lateness of the time. Surprise turned to anger as Bob looked through the peephole. There was nobody there.

As soon as he turned to return to his bed, the bell rung again. "What in the Web...?" He murmured surprised, when he don't saw anyone again through the peephole.

When the bell ringed by the third time, he opened the door and he walked to the corridor, looking for who was playing a joke on him. There wasn't anybody in the corridor.

Scratching his head, confused, he went back to the apartment. That strategy game he played earlier today must have got him more tired than he thought.

After fetching an energy can in the kitchen, he sat down on the sofa. Drinking the energy, he appreciated the silence of his apartment. Mike, his TV that couldn't be turned off because the remote control ran away, on that moment was in some system, playing the tour guide, for Hex. He laughed when he thought that Hex, a chaotic virus, was a spy for AVERT... after all, nobody would think that a virus, in special a chaotic one, could be helping them to defeat Echelon... But Hexadecimal was one of a kind, even for a chaotic virus...

He got startled when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Placing the can in the center table, he teleported himself for there. There was no one there, the noise had been a pile of glasses that had fallen in the sink.

When he returned to the living room, he was surprised when he found the energy can on top of the sofa. Shrugging it off, he finished drinking the energy, and he went to the bathroom, to have a good bath. Maybe he would relax a little. Closing the door, he frowned at the sound that the door had made, as if it had hit something. While he took a shower, the door opened up slowly. He didn't care. He closed his eyes for one moment. When he opened them, he thought that he saw a shadow in the steam.

"What the...?" The shadow had disappeared.

Leaving the shower, Bob looked around him, startled. He could swear that... He shook his head. And he laughed at the idea that he had.

"_She_ would never do that." He murmured for himself, smiling of that ridiculous idea. The smile disappeared soon later, with an afterthought. "I mean, I don't think so..."

He looked around again, searching for anything out of the normal. He joined his hands, and made a kind of energy net, of the size of a blanket. When he heard a noise behind him, he threw the net, that dropped in the ground. The noise was from the door as it closed.

Laughing at himself, he went back to the bed. Some microseconds later, he slept.

The tuft of hair on his forehead moved, as if an invisible hand had moved it. A small depression appeared in his cheek, as if it was being touched gently by a finger. The depression went down slowly for the neck, reaching his chest.

Bob didn't stir. Marks in the form of a pair of a woman's hands appeared in the sheet that covered him. The marks moved, as if they were massaging him. After it stopped, his lips moved, as if they were being kissed. The ghost of a smile appeared in the face of the sleeping sprite, before he bolted awake, bathed in a cold sweat.

He didn't hear when the door of his apartment opened and closed by itself.

======

It was almost the beginning of the uptime when Dot arrived at her apartment. She entered, carefully so that she didn't wake up her brother.

She didn't believe in everything that had got to do due to her invisibility... in the train station, in the movie theatre, in the sporting center, in Bob's apartment (she didn't bother to hide her invisible smile)... They didn't even imagined that she was beside them! They thought that was their imagination when they noticed something! Only Bob thought that she could be there, but even so he laughed at the idea. He didn't could picture her doing that! All that did that she felt something that she didn't get to define very well.

It was something as... freedom.

She stopped, suddenly thoughtful. It was the only word to describe it... freedom.

The invisibility had its drawbacks, as in the case of the truck that almost ran her over, or when Bob (without knowing, of course) had almost slammed the door of the bathroom on her nose... but anyway...

In the bathroom, the faucet opened up and a small puddle of water floated in the air and splashed over her face, turning it visible. With an indecipherable tone of voice and a serious expression in on her face, which faded from view as the water slipped away, she announced:

_"It is incredible what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore."_

* * *

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 5 coming soon...


	5. Chapter 5 Anger Outbursts

_The Hollow Sprite_  
_by Joshua Falken_

_Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"_

_Thanks to Julia_Cat for the beta-reading and for the revision. Thank you! :-)_

* * *

_**Chapter 5 - Anger Outbursts**_

The cycle following Dot's night out, early in the morning, Dr. Welman Matrix and Mouse examined the wreckage of Project Rainbow, searching for a clue about what had gone wrong and for a way to make Dot return to the normal.

While Mouse tried to recover some project files from the data recorders, the Director of Pentium Institute examined the place where Dr. Hewlett Iridium was at the moment of the doomed experiment. The platform was littered with wreckage. The electromagnets were totally twisted. He began to remove the debris to try to clean the area in order to examine the machines. After a few nanoseconds, he noticed a loose piece below the test platform.

_This is random... This piece doesn't seem to fit anywhere!_ he thought, surprised.

"Dr. Matrix!"

"Yes, Mouse?" he asked, placing the piece distractedly into the pocket of his lab coat.

"Look at this." The hacker indicated a series of wave function graphics that she had managed to recover from the corrupted records. The mathematician examined the graphics with great interest, especially one with an extremely _anomalous_ curve. "What are those?" she asked.

"They are wave function graphics of data with different levels of energy," he explained, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"Do they give any clues about what went wrong?" To be honest, Mouse wanted to ask, exasperated: _What in the Web do you mean by that?! Why can't these academic types speak in plain DOS?_

"At this point? No. But perhaps with more data..."

At that moment, a lab assistant informed them that CGI agents wanted to examine the place.

"Tell them that they can come in a little late," the Director of the Institute said.

"Should I leave this data in the system?" Mouse asked. She didn't think that a was good idea.

"Leave it. I don't believe that this data would make any sense to anyone without doctors Cisco and Iridium."

"I understand. When can we speak to him?"

The older sprite sighed. "No idea. He didn't recover enough to be interrogated." (In spite of Dot's courageous act, the binome had suffered a very strong blow to the head. Even after so much time, he had not still woken up; he was still in his hospital room being supervised by the CGI.)

After they copied the data, the hacker and the mathematician left the lab.

======

Meanwhile, Dot Matrix woke up, having rested from her night's walk. She saw that she had woken up before Enzo. She got out of bed, placed her mask over her invisible face, and went into the bathroom. Examining herself in the mirror, she thought: "My 'face' _doesn't_ seem natural. It doesn't seem natural _at all!_ Especially due to my hollow eyes. But perhaps with contact lenses and a better make-up... perhaps I could _pass_ for normal..."

She was so lost in thought that she started when a voice called her: "Dot? Are you already up?" It was Enzo, still yawning. Waking up early was a thing that he never had been used to. For a moment, Dot wondered how AndrAIa and Matrix dealt with that detail while they are game-hopping...

"Yes, I did. You can take a shower."

She left and began to dress in her visible gear. She opened a vidwindow and the image of Dr. Welman Matrix appeared.

"Hi, Dot."

"Any luck with the files, dad?" She zeroed in on the point.

"Not much." He admitted.

She nodded slowly. She already was expecting that. "I understand. And those special lenses?"

"About that I have good news: they will be ready this evening."

They said good-bye. At that moment, Dot felt a very strong headache and a dizzy spell. Happily, that disappeared when Enzo appeared in his Cadet uniform.

"Let's go, Dot!"

"Ok." She thought that he didn't need to know about her indisposition. It wasn't important, she thought.

======

In his office, Dr. Welman Matrix examined the data of the Project with astonishment. He had already discovered that Iridium and Cisco had developed a totally different method from the MS-DOS/Neumann Equation - their method involved the manipulation of the quantum wave functions itself to _phase-shift_ a sprite from the visible universe. The sprite would be undetectable by _any means!_

He sighed. Now he had to discover _how_ they did that...

He placed his right hand in the pocket of his lab coat to catch a pen when he remembered that had kept the loose piece from the project. The mathematician placed the piece on the table and he scratched his chin. It didn't seem to be a conventional field inductor. He took a multimeter from a drawer and was about to examine the mystery piece when he heard a knock on the door.

"Dr. Matrix?"

"Yes?"

"Here are the lenses that you asked for," the binome explained.

"Thank you."

The Director of Pentium Institute immediately called Dot, forgetting completely about the mystery piece.

======

Later, Matrix was helping Mouse to repair a control panel in the Core Control Room, when Dot entered. She bit her lower lip, wondering if she should go ahead with her idea. Finally, she decided, touching her brother's shoulder:

"Can I talk to you for a nano?"

"Sure. What's the problem, Dot?"

"It's a personal matter."

"Well, sugah, I have to get a energy flow meter in the other room so you two can be alone." Mouse said, understanding what the Command.Com wanted. After the hacker left the room, Dot asked:

"Enzo, why didn't you propose to AndrAIa right away?"

Matrix couldn't have been more surprised. _"What do you mean?!"_ he asked, his voice as close to squeaking as was possible. Dot used all her self-control to not laugh at his reaction.

"I know that you even bought the wedding rings. Why didn't you propose her?" she insisted.

"But.. but how do you know about that?!"

"I have my ways..." she said with a impish smile. She didn't think that she needed to explain _how exactly_ she knew that. "And you didn't answer my question."

"I'm just waiting for the right moment, all right? And speaking about proposing, why haven't you and Bob gotten married by now, huh?"

Dot already had the answer for that ready. "We are dating on our own pace, Enzo. Besides, you and AndrAIa have been together much longer than Bob and I have been."

Matrix messed up his hair in frustration. She had a point, as always. In a certain point of view, he and AndrAIa _had_ been together much more time that the Guardian and the Command.Com... In a murmur, he asked:

"Do you think that she... would say yes?"

Dot smiled, pressing Matrix's shoulder.

"I am sure that she will." She left her brother alone with his thoughts.

======

It was already late when Dot finished her make-up work. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was already using the new contact lenses. _It's show time_, she thought.

"Enzo, can you come here?"

Her little brother appeared in the door.

"Yes, Dot?"

"Do you notice anything strange about my face?" she asked, more casually than she had hoped.

The cadet looked well at his sister's face. He could see her brilliant violet eyes. Then it clicked. "Sis, did you become visible again?" He wanted to discard that hypothesis first. Dot answered by removing the glove from her right hand; her hand was not visible.

"By the User, Dot!" Enzo exclaimed, excited. "What did you do?"

"I improved my make-up a little." The Command.Com explained. "Did you notice anything strange?"

"_No!_ I wouldn't even have guessed that anything _happened_ to you _at all!_" Enzo said, looking at the sides of Dot's face carefully. That was exactly what Dot wanted to hear. "Wow! Pixelacious!" he murmured, stunned.

"Pixelacious..." she agreed in her thoughts. Well, now that she could pass for normal, no one would suspect her secret. "And now, I have to learn to control... _this gift_," she decided quietly.

======

It was late of the night, when a binome and its family came back in their car to their house thorugh the deserted streets of Mainframe. When he passed through a crossing, he heard a furious woman's voice scream:

"Hey, Burned Circuit!"

Surprised because there was no one the street, he stopped the car by pure instinct.

"What?"

It was in that moment that the windshield was broken, and in the following nanoseconds, the lateral glasses. It was as if an invisible force was trying to enter in an attack of fury.

"What is happening, Ian??" the driver's wife asked in a scared scream.

"I don't know!"

The invisible force broke the back glass with a metal lever, at the same time that broke the car's taillights. It was as if the car's rear was being kicked.

"Let's get out of here!" she screamed.

The driver stepped on the accelerator, getting away from there.

For a time the only thing that could be heard was somebody recovering her breath. Soon after, other sound accompanied. An inattentive listener would think that was a cry - actually it was something more frightening: it was gleeful laughter...

======

The following cycle, Dot was awoken by her brother. She found it strange that she felt so tired. After all, she had just left the building, gone to the Principal Office, from there to Baudway and... and...

She stopped for a nano.

She didn't remember.

"What's wrong, Dot?" Enzo asked, noticing his sister's concern. 

"Nothing, Enzo." She calmed him, hiding her own nervousness. _Why don't I remember what happened last night?_ she wondered, concerned, while she got up. _After all, it is not like I did something wrong ... right?_

======

Later, a worried Dot was submitted to a new medical exam. Unhappily, it was discovered that the hollow sprite was allergic to one of the reagents: she felt very ill and now she was vomiting in one of the stalls.

"Defrag it, you told me that a simple test!" she complained, as soon as she had recovered a little.

"Sorry, Dot, but I didn't know you'd be allergic to..." Dr. Matrix tried to explain, but it was interrupted by a more and more angry sprite.

"Dad, I was vomiting for 10 microseconds! And all that for a simple test! And in the..." In a gesture of fury, she threw a vidwindow against the wall of the laboratory, shattering it.

"DOT! Calm down! I understand that you are under tremendous pressure after what happened. But screaming won't solve the situation!" Her father exclaimed with all his paternal authority. In that, he was helped by his fright due to his daughter's explosion. All right, he admitted that she had inherited a little of his somewhat short temper, but that furious shine in her eye... that tone of voice... it was not normal for Dot... _it was not_...

The stunned silence that followed was interrupted by Enzo who had entered in laboratory, worried with the discussion that had heard. After they convinced him that it was not serious, Dot spoke to her father:

"Dad, excuse me..."

"All right, Dot." He calmed her, while she rebooted, to wear her black blouse again. "Tomorrow, we will continue the tests."

Dot rose from the exam table. Dr. Welman Matrix observed while she and Enzo walked down the corridor toward the elevator. The corridor's acoustics allowed him to hear the chat. 

"Are you on-line?"

"I am, Enzo. Why you ask?"

"Well, I don't know. The way that you walk... you look weak." Enzo considered the situation for one moment. "Do you want an energy shake?"

After a short silence, Dot answered:

"I don't think so, Enzo."

The door of the elevator closed and Dr. Matrix shook his head.

"What a mess!" he murmured to himself.

======

The Command.Com extended her arms over her head, finishing the work of the cycle. Daemon had gotten to re-infect back some systems that they had freed. She punched the table in a gesture of frustration. "My User, it looks like that this _will never end!_ Whenever we get a break..."

Dot sighed. She still had to read the cycle's CPU report and leaf through the Mainframe Data-Times and, unhappily, the Mainframe Tattler. After all, the Command.Com had to be informed about what happened in her system.

It was a routine report except for the last item: an attack against a car had been reported... by an invisible force in Baudway.

Dot stood up immediately. She didn't believe it. She could not believe it. "I.. I didn't do that! I _couldn't_ have done that!" she implored quietly.   
She immediately read Mainframe Data-Times. Nothing about that attack. She thought that she should have waited for that: after all the newspaper was too serious to publish news like that without evidence... Fearing for the worst, she read the Tattler. Surprisingly, there wasn't anything about the attack in there, either. 

Dot breathed, alleviated, sitting down in her chair. Until then a thought insisted on reappearing in her neural interface: Why didn't she remember what she had done yesterday night? Her train of thought, to Dot's relief, was broken by a vidwindow. It was AndrAIa, and she was very excited – she was hardly able to speak for her excitement.

"What's going on, AndrAIa?"

The game sprite just lifted her hand so that Dot could see. She had an engagement ring on her finger.

"Then, Enzo finally proposed!" Dot thought, sharing her friend's happiness. "My congratulations, AndrAIa! Did you already set a date?"

"Well, we thought it better to wait until that Daemon is defeated. You understand."

"Yes, I understand. Did you already inform the others?"

"Not yet. We want to inform them this downtime."

"Well, congratulations!"

"Thank you!" AndrAIa exclaimed, radiant.

The two friends cut the connection. Dot's good mood changed as soon as her eyes fell on an article written by Roger Pagemaker. Unbelieving, she read the article that accused Dot of being, in simple terms, actually a virus at service of Daemon. In a normal situation, she would ignore it without losing any sleep - but in her current mental state, the malicious and sarcastic way the article was written made her furious.

======

It was late when Roger Pagemaker walked through Motorola Track, going back to his apartment. Before entering the building, he had the feeling that he was being fellowed. He looked around. No one was there.

He laughed and climbed the stairs to the ninth floor. The reporter didn't notice that the door of the building had opened slowly and quietly.

When arriving at the end of the corridor of his floor, Roger Pagemaker heard steps speeding up in the corridor. He only had time to turn around before an invisible force threw him through the corridor window. Outside of the building, a homeless binome saw the reporter's body fall and fade slowly. Only the victim's PID remained.

What nobody saw or noticed was the front door of the building opening and closing quietly some nanos later.

* * *

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 6 coming soon...


End file.
